Rap is the most intense art form I'm aware of right now. It engages the body and mind in a heated exchange of sweat and information. It is a response by a culture to a system which sought to write it out of history and leave it outside of economy.
Black people's names are not their own. That's why Malcolm took "X" as his last name. Nation conscious rappers are seeking to define the 'X'. As Chuck D, from Public Enemy, points out: "If you don't know the old you're not gonna know the new". If you don't have a past then you must serve somebody else's. You must serve their history, their language and the systems they have developed. Because without a past, you are without tools, whether they be cultural, spiritual or economic. Because everything that has strength has a past.
Like language. Language has developed from crude grunts to sophisticated communication. It has achieved this as a result of learning from its history. Year by year it built new words and laws by reshaping or discarding older ones. Take away language's history and you have no language. Take away a people's history and you have no culture.
Black Americans have a history - the oldest history of all civilisations. It may be hidden deep under white lies but it is there to be dug up by those with enough courage. Rap is a shovel in the hands of young Blacks who refuse to believe that slavery was the beginning of their history. Rappers like KRS One from Boogie Down Production who says: "Genesis, Chapter 11, Verse 10/Explains the genealogy of Shem/Shem was a Black man in Africa/If you repeat this fact they can't laugh at ya/Genesis, 14, Verse 13/Abraham steps on the scene/Being a descendant of Shem, which is a fact/Means Abraham too was black... Abraham was the father of Isaac/Isaac was the father of Jacob/Jacob had twelve sons, for real/And these were the children of Israel." ("Why Is That?")
It is no surprise that KRS One samples Gil Scott Heron on "Why Is That?" The first time I heard Gil Scott Heron was about 1980 and he changed my life. He introduced me to a poetry that was real, that was relevant, that was angry and beautiful. If you're into that sort of poetry you should do anything to get your hands on his 1978 album "The Mind Of Gil Scott Heron - A Collection of Poetry And Music" (Arista).
From "The New Deal" he raps: "There seems to have been this pattern/That took a long time to pick up on/But all black leaders who dared stand up/Wuz in jail, in the courtroom or gone/Picked up indiscriminately by the shock troops of discrimination/To end up in jails or tied up in trials/While dirty tricks soured the nation/I've been hoodwinked by professional hoods/My ego had happened to me/'Just keep things cool', they kept repeating/'And keep the people off the streets/We'll settle this at the conference table/You leave everything to me.'/Which brings me back to my convictions/And being convicted for my beliefs/'Cause I believe these smiles/In three piece suits/With gracious liberal demeanour/Took our movement off the streets/And took us to the cleaners/In other words, we let up the pressure/And that was all part of their plan/And every day we allow slip through our fingers/Is playing right into their hands."
Rap is reality - that's what feeds its genius. It's what makes it brutal. A lot of white people don't like rap because all they hear in it is sex and violence. But as KRS One points out, "We cannot blame the recording artists. The artist means nothing. It is the consciousness of the masses of the people that is to blame here. Who taught the Rap groups to respect sex and violence? Where does sex and violence come from? Radio is sex, television is violence."
We buy our children toy guns and we gouge ourselves on violent films. We call it child's play. We call it entertainment. But rap does not play fair. Rap straddles the line between entertainment and reality. We're not sure what Ice-T means when he raps "Cop Killer". If only he was like Arnold. We love to watch violence but it's only fiction, we say. And the emotions this violence arouses in us are only movie feelings, we say. But rap won't mark the exit doors clearly. Rap doesn't come with popcorn. Rap comes too close to being real. Rap says it straight. And that's embarrassing. And frightening.
The basic tools of Rap are the microphone and the record deck. There's a good reason for this - poverty. Those who lived in the ghetto couldn't afford guitars, drums and the like. Instead they created music out of scratching and James Brown drum loops. Samplers came later.
A large part of the roots of rap are in reggae, while a large part of reggae's roots are in black American R ... B. It's that old law: What goes around, comes around. During the Second World War there were several American bases in Jamaica. The Black soldiers brought their R ... B and Blues records. The clubs were filled with R ... B music to attract the soldiers and their money. Before long, club owners were employing locals to imitate the R ... B sound. The war ended and the soldiers left. The R ... B cover bands stopped doing covers and modern reggae was born.
While up in the Bronx - the birth place of Rap - Jamaicans were settling by the thousand. The future rappers, such as KRS One, Grandmaster Caz and Grandmaster Flash, would be sons of such emigrants. Then around 1968 another Jamaican arrived. His name was DJ Kool Herc and he is regarded as the father of Rap. In Jamaica the sound system was everything; speakers were bigger than fridges and louder than bombs. When DJ Kool Herc hit town he blew the opposition away.
But Rap had many other sources, as influential record producer Paul Winley explains: "Rap's forebears stretch back through disco, street funk, radio DJs, Bo Diddley, the bebop singers, Cab Calloway, Pigmeat Markham, the tap dancers and comics, The Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, Muhammad Ali, acappella and doo-wop groups, ring games, skip-rope rhymes, prison and army songs, toasts, signifying the dozens, all the way back to the griots of Nigeria and Gambia. No matter how far it penetrates into the twilight maze of Japanese video games and cool European electronics, its roots are still the deepest in all contemporary Afro-American music."
Afrika Islam, producer of Ice-T knew what fuelled it too. "It was straight up nigger music. That's the way we defined it, nigger music. 'Cause nobody wanted to hear it but the niggers." But with time, white ears did begin to listen. Afrika Islam: "The Village Voice knew about the Hip Hop scene and invited the DJs to come down and play the new wave clubs. We were playing everything from Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way' to Dunk And The Blazers... Then we found out that we all kind of dance to the same beat. So Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force went on to do 'Planet Rock', and Flash went on to do 'The Message' and 'White Lines'. So they became universal songs. Then you had the punk rockers that were dancing slam and you had the hip hoppers who were break dancing, and rocking to the same beat in the same place."
An impression has been created - generally by the white-washed media - that rap is racist, and that the target of that racism are White people. White people who have built their world on the genocide and oppression of other cultures are scared shitless that what goes around, comes around. They fear that some day whitey might mean what nigger means today. Personally - being white and all - I think it would be a good medicine for whites to taste for a while. However, being Irish - a white nigger - I know this medicine's taste well.
There are rappers who are racist towards whites - sure. But the vast majority of Rap I've heard doesn't follow this agenda. For example, groups such as Digital Underground: "It's not a black or a white thing/It's a human being thing."; Public Enemy: "Are you afraid of the mix of Black and White?/We're living in a land where/The law says the mixing of race/Makes the blood impure/She's a woman, I'm a man/But by the look on your face/See ya can't stand it"; KRS One: "Because remember, it's not about race, it's not about colour, it's about money, it's about economics."; Ice-T: "The problem isn't the lyrics on the records/It's the fear of the White kids liking the Black artists/But the real problem is the fear of the White girl/Falling in love with the Black man."
Many of the great rappers such as KRS One and Chuck D are trying to help build a new consciousness for their people, and by extension, for all people. However, because Rap is so much a part of its environment, because it avoids pretence, its reality is often very ugly. Its world has seen women as slaves and hoes to be motherfucked. It goes to show that we all operate from the same well of instincts, wherether we're the tennis players of Fitzwilliam or the sexist Rappers of the Bronx. But, laughably, some would see the racket-heads as being 'civilised' and the sexist Rappers as being 'uncivilised'.
Who are the civilised? Just because you wear a suit and tie and talk in a West Brit accent doesn't mean you're civilised. There's as many criminals and savages - if not more - in, say, Blackrock than there are in Summerhill. More and far greater crimes have been committed by a pen and paper than by a gun and bomb. (The gun and bomb is often fired or exploded as a result of a signature or command from the 'civilised'.) And this is why the establishment hates Rap, because Rap is reality.
The West has been created - and spends tremendious energy in maintaining - the illusion that it is civilised. But the facts are that the West is the hardcore of savagery on this planet. Civilised people, by definition, can solve their problems by discourse. Only savages need more and bigger weapons. It was Western savages who raped, pillaged and colonised the world. And in their twisted, greedy minds they rationalised that they were civilising the savage, that this was their God-given duty.
So, for a Westerner to describe Rap as being uncivilised, is like the nuclear warhead calling the gun dangerous. Yes, Rap has loads of NWA's and 2 Live Crew's. But there are countless Rap groups such as Public Enemy, Gang Starr, Boogie Down Productions, Consolidated, Ice-T, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Arrested Development, etc. etc., who are pushing and challenging the way we see, and think about, the world. We may see Ice-T as glorifying in violence. Or we may see him as an artist that shoves our face into a reality that we daily accept but do not have the moral courage to acknowledge. Because why are cops afraid that kids will listen and take heed of Ice-T's "Cop Killer"? Why would a kid want to kill a cop?
Rap has its contradictions. The Ice Cube's can find a fresh door into a better future in one track, while in the next throw it all away with a closed fist of bigotry and sexism. But the fact is that so many rappers are searching. They are taking poetry and music and making it work for them in 1993. They are challenging the world. They want something, anything, that might be better. Rap is never apathy. Rap is anger. Rap is hate. Rap is love. Rap is hope. And right now, in the universe of music, Rap is the sun.
What can, say an Irish person, learn from Rap? Well, what I've learned is something I've felt for a long while. Rap articulated it for me. It is that although we live within what we can call the Irish state, we really exist within several states. The poor live within the state of poverty. Now, the state of poverty is a very small state. Things like 'culture' - although they are not explicitly excluded; those in power are far too clever for that - don't belong to the poverty state.
Look at it this way: Rock 'n' Roll is entertainment but classical music is art. Rock or Rap lyrics are just lyrics but page/establishment poetry is 'art'. If you visit art galleries you've an artistic sensibility and you've really made it 'up there' if your home is full of original paintings. But who can afford #2,000 for a painting? What is peddled as 'art' has always been a means by which rich people show-off their wealth. The rich state employs critics and academics to massage and reinforce the idea that 'rich means artistic'. It's a giant con, of course, but it has been going on for so long and it so widespread that its lie has become a 'truth'.
Rap is a revolutionary tool in that it is an art anybody can make and everybody can understand. Great art can bring about great change. And Rap is a great art form. And it has much in common with Irish poetry. Not that utter shite that gets called 'poetry' here today. No, the Irish poetry I'm talking about, belongs mainly to the past. There was a time when an Irish poet had enormous respect among the people. This was because the poet was of the people and the poetry embodied the people's history, their loves and joys and fears and hopes.
What happened? That would take a book to explain. Suffice it to say that the state copped on to the power of poetry and by careful planning and manipulation reared an establishment of poetic gigolos and prostitutes. Their job is to give obscure poetic blowjobs, and for this service they are dished out art council grants and positions within universities, state institutions, etc. Not all poets hid under the apron of a pimpish state - Kavanagh and Clarke are exceptions of a sort - but the exceptions only went to prove the rule.
Today. 1993. The state will always seek to protect itself. The state is a structure and it fears change, because change involves restructuring. However, change is essential both for the future of the state and the happiness of the people within it. The 1937 Constitution may have been OK in 1937 but we have moved on and it, and the institutions and laws of the state, should be moving on too.
And Rap can help us to move on. The Bronx is Summerhill. South Central is Ballymun. If Rap were to come out of there, we would have the opportunity to learn about what it's really like to live there - if we wanted to. We'd hear a lot of anger, bitterness and despair. We'd probably try to censor that - as usual. But if we truly believed in words like 'democracy', then Ballymun Conscious Rap could help us in trying to construct a genuine one and not its facade.
So, let's hope that Ireland's youth raises itself up from the incredible apathy that now infects it. Let's hope it catches the Rap Train. Because Rap is great entertainment. And Rap, used properly, has the bardic ability to educate through rhyme - a great way to learn. And with this combination of entertainment and education, real and positive change can be achieved. KRS One has a word for it: *Edutainment!*
* Gerry McGovern
(For more information on the history and current state of Rap, check out: "Nation Conscious Rap" Edited by: Joseph D. Eure and James G. Spady. (PC International Press, 30 Dewey Press, Brooklyn, NY 11233) and "Rap Attack 2 - African Rap To Global Hip Hop" By David Toop (Serpent's Tail)